Domenech For Dummies
Ben Domenech has resigned from the Washington Post. This is how editor Jim Brady announced it:
“Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.
We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.”
Woohoo, the blogosphere wins – but who the hell is Domenech, and why is he important?
First, a brief rundown of the whole brouhaha that has driven the US progressive blogosphere to ever new heights of outraged derision. And there’ s much to deride.
Domenech is 24 years old, a home schooled Christian who was assiduously groomed for entrance into the inner circles of Republican Washiungton. In return for being morally upright virginal poster boy for homeschooled rectitude – Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s Republican Boy! – his mentors in DC made sure he’d make all the right connections. Take a look at his biography – it reads like that of a Georgetown graduate aged 40 or thereabouts. Bright-eyed and beardless Ben’s rise has been positively meteoric, and has been given additional upward impetus by his access to bully pulpits at the National Review Online and at his own website, Red State, where he posts as ‘Augustine’ :
As Augustine, Domenech has engaged in numerous personal attacks, some of which were compiled by the blog Dragonfire. Domenech has called cartoonist Ted Rall a “steaming bag of pus”; said Teresa Heinz Kerry looks like an “oddly shaped egotistical ketchup-colored muppet”; called Pat Robertson a “senile, crazy old fool”; and described Post.com’s “White House Briefing” columnist Dan Froomkin as “an embarrassment.”
‘Augustine’ made a number of quite blatantly racist posts at Red State, which pretty much matches the genral tenor of the place, which bills itself as a sensible conservative discussion forum but which more often than not descends into insane abuse. Augustine’s own comments’re online for anyone to see, including anyone who might want to hire him to write for them. His opinions were pretty out-there, but so far, so dull, for the average wingnut.
Then he got given a blogging gig at the Washington Post.
Domenech’d managed to leapfrog right over the heads of WaPo staff , career journalists and longtime political pundits and writers, both on and offline, right into a plum position, co-equal with real journalists who blog at WaPo like Dan Froomkin. Not only that, but Ben was one of the most rabid, the most pro-Administration of all the wingnut bloggers. How had he done it? and more to the point, why had the Washington Post and its editor Jum Brady hired what amounted to a government mouthpiece? Brady was already on shaky ground after failing to correct untruths written by his paper’s ombudsman, ( who was herself under attack for bias).
So the left bloggers did what they do best, and looked into the matter. They did it properly, checking back on all this ‘professional’ writer’s available writings for some clue as to why he’d succeeded so wildly when so many, equally or even more worthy, hadn’t. No doubt some were motivated by at least a modicum of envy – what blogger isn’t a journalist manque? Who can’t wistfully imagine their byline and headshot up on a major national newspaper, and the money, recognition and influence that comes with it? But most were motivated by genuine outrage and what they discovered was that young Ben hadn’t actually written much of his stuff at all – he’d just copied it, lock stock and barrel, from a mixture of PJ O’Rourke, Salon reviews and other blogs.
Then the shit really hit the fan.
What had been a gale of derision became a hurricane. Despite a desperate and hilariously badly written rearguard action by his friends at Red State, who deny the evidence of their own eyes rather than accept that Rove’s Chosen One has feet of clay, now even his biggest supporters are abandoning him.
WaPo’s response ? To try and tough it out, despite all the evidence. (Hmm, I’m sensing a pattern here.) What would it take to get canned, give a hummer to Jeff Goldstein’s dog in public?
Perhaps the WaPo had no protocols for dealing with a plagiarising blogger, blogging being new media and all – if that’s so, then well, here’s a little tutorial for Mr Brady on how a real newspaper, The Boston Globe, deals with a plagiarist – they fire his ass, not tough it out till he resigns .
Explore New England Blogger Fired for Plagairism …er, Plagiarism
This morning I discovered that Burlington resident Matt Mahoney of the ExploreNewEngland Vermont Blog was stealing content from Seven Days and posting it as his own. I just got off the phone with Ron Agrella, Features Content Manager for Boston.com, who apologized for Mahoney’s behavior. “As of a few minutes ago, he no longer works for us,” said Agrella.
Mahoney was one of six bloggers who contribute to state-specific sites affiliated with ExploreNewEngland.com, an online media venture owned by the Boston Globe and the New York Times. “We use non-journalists for our bloggers,” explained Agrella.
Agrella said that all of ExploreNewEngland’s bloggers are independent contractors, who are expected to understand that plagairism plagiarism is unacceptable. He said that the bloggers are supposed to scan the web and the news for interesting events, then blog about them, citing sources when appropriate.
Which brings us to the other half of the question, why is this important? Why should we care about some pissant little wannabe and his inside-the-beltway petty corruption? he’s resined hasn’t he?
Well, if you blog, you should care.
The best way for the Washington Post and Brady to extricate themselves from this embarassing mess with any shred of credibility remaining is to blame all bloggers for Domenech’s sins. We’ll all be infected with Domenech’s contagion if Brady has his way. Any blogger who’s hoping to be taken seriously as a writer, and there are many of them, will find themselves damned along with Domenech as the WaPo uses this to to attack the upstarts in new media whose existence and success threaten the hegemony of the big papers. Come to think of it, this whole thing could turn out to have been a bonus for old media.
Which would be very convenient. Maybe too convenient? I don’t know.
One positive outcome I suppose is that the purulent growths on the face of politics that are Red State and its denizens have been exposed. It’s time the general public saw what vipers the Beltway criowd are nurturing in their bosoms.
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